Off train. Actually remember not to reach for ticket which is not coming out of the barrier. Yesssssss. Also do not walk into barrier. VICTORY.

Walk down to GS. Not raining yet. V. cold though. Where is the sun? Nearly miss Vine Street because I think it’s further away that it actually is. Sure I look like a total spaz to the guy walking behind me. Oh well. Giant yellow shutters! Hello!

Oh God, I forgot how cold this place is. Not wearing socks, and forgot the gloves. Can I really leave already and go to starbucks? No, that would be wrong.

Mess with images for the newsletter. Fix browser-compatiblity problem. How did that take all morning? FUCK YOU INTERNET EPLORER, FUCK YOU.

Lunch. Tesco for sandwich. Baaaaaacon. Starbucks. Just get a regular. Just get a regular. Just get a – wait, when did I order the large coffee? Whoops.

Fuck. Rain. Glasses. Am blind.

Hmm, the cold out there almost makes this place seem warm… Wait, no. Sorry. Time to hug the coffee cup. Mmm, caffienated hot water bottle.

Play with fonts for Adam’s new wedding photography website. “Hitched” in certain cursive fonts looks an awful lot like “bitches”. Hmm. Probably not a good choice.

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This post ends here, because I went home, and had a bit of a breakdown, which I am still experiencing. Doctors tomorrow, and I’m not leaving until someone helps me.

I’ll be honest, nothing is doing this today. I am spectacularly without glee. What I am is a bit mental. In the bad sense. In the staying-in-bed the whole time I’m not at work. i don’t want to take photos, I don’t want to code things, I barely want to see people. I am not really someone who is holding her shit together so well right now.

And there is no reason for me feeling like this except that my brain is, as it has been my entire life, wired wrong.

My doctor thinks she’s found a drug that will help -and which won’t make me hallucinate – so I’m seeing her next week. The next seven days cannot go fast enough.

1. Choose your mug. It’s walls should be thick enough to hold heat for a good amount of time, but not so thick that you have trouble drinking out of it. It should also be coloured/patterned/painted in a way that is pleasing to you. My favourites include: Red & white polkadots, the Shoe of Salvation, and Dark Side of the Moon.

2. Pick your tea. Almost (but not quite) as important as your mug choice. For this example I am going to choose loose-leaf Twinings Breakfast Tea, because it is yummy.

3. Pick your teapot. Look, I’m sorry, but you cannot make a proper cup of tea without a teapot. A teapot can even salvage teabags, so choose wisely, or steal your grandmothers. My Mum and I have a small collection starting, however the only one that is mine is red with white polkasots and it matches my mug.

4. Boil your water. You want to have two teapot-fulls going, whether you boil your water in a kettle or on the stove. NO MICROWAVES. We have some class 😉 (One teapot-full should be enough to fill however many mugs you are making, plus one)

5. When the water is boiled, fill the teapot up, put the lid on, and STEP AWAY FROM THE TEAPOT. Get out your sugar/honey/preferred sweetener, choose your cream/milk, and leave your teapot to heat, and the remaining pre-boiled water to cool slightly. Scalded tea is not tasty. About 2-3 minutes should do it.

6. Pour the water out of the teapot.

7. Place (number of mugs of tea) + 1 heaped teaspoonfuls of loose tea OR the same number of teabags into the pot. Fill with remaining hot water. Stir quickly (for no reason other than if you stir slowly you will get burnt :p). Leave for a minimum of 3 minutes, or more if you have a bigger teapot or like your tea stronger.

8. Pour your tea! For this you neeed something to strain the tea through and catch any escapee tea leaves – you can buy tea strainers, but a clean teatowel/cheesecloth will do.

9. Add sugar & milk to taste. Many people will say that you should add the milk before the tea, but I disagree. Each to their own.

I’m not sure what my hobbies are at the moment. Sleeping? Does sleeping count? I do a lot of sleeping these days?

Oh! Right! The dancing thing. I guess that counts. I dance. Jive mostly these days, but in the past ballet (for, like, thirteen years. Um. Yeah. All I got from that was two sprained ankles, a lot of flexibility, and the ability to spin around without falling on my ass. Most of the time), hip-hop, tap, jazz, salsa, tango, ballroom, swing, modern, expressive… You name it, I can probably still dance at least a step or two.

This is less useful in life than one might think, although I did do jazz hands twice in my last interview, and I got the job, so take from that what you will.

PS Photo not mine, nor am I in it. Click it to go to the photographer’s flickr! Must get my twirling skirt out…

Okay, since this meme is about GLEE, as in HAPPINESS, I choose a piece of music that always, without fail, makes me well up. Actually, I choose two. Both are horrendously uncool, but I was uncool before it was cool to be uncool, so here goes.

I choose To Build Jerusalem in secondplace, which is double uncool since I am somewhat of a complete athiest, and am pretty much anti-all-organised-religion, but it would appear that all those years of church schools, and the years of going to church in order to GET IN TO the church schools, have taken their toll.

The winner, I have to say, I am not ashamed of in the slightest, because is is be-fucking-autiful, and it is the song I’ve added here, and it’s the Cantique de Jean Racine composed by Gabriele Fauré.

I have a tendency to play it while I’m driving in much the same manner that certain groups of people my age will play rap, R’n’B, or bad rap-metal, that is to say, so loud that I occasionally fear it will shake the car apart.

Oooh dear. I have only ever really been “in” two fandoms, although I read fanfic for several more. Those two being Harry Potter (for, like, ten years. Yeah. Shut up. It was fun, and got me drunk A LOT with awesome people), and more recently The Demon’s Lexicon.

Fanfics from the TDL fandom mean more to me because I’ve been there FROM THE START and these people are my friends… particularly my favourites are the utterly crack-tastic “Chris Pine” by Pyro (for which I, and twelve hours in a chat room, am entirely to blame), or “Prelude to a Monologue on an Assyrian Obelisk” by Novembersmith, because Nick makes a smilie face with knives among other excellent things.

Of course, there’s always the fic that I stumbled upon eight years ago which has evenutually lead me to the TDL fandom, and that is Sarah’s two fics: “Draco Malfoy, the Amazing Bouncing… Rat?” and of course “Underwater Light”.

Or do I choose the fic that, even before Sarah’s, lead me to slash fic? Obviously, I mean Rhysenn’s “Irresistible Poison”. Which I haven’t read since I was thirteen, but I can still remember. Reading that fic in the IT room at school got me a) kicked out twice and b) a boyfriend. Yeah. You read that right.

I think, though, that the winner has to be Cassandra Claire’s “Draco Trilogy” because it still breaks my heart with love every time I read it. AND NOW SHE DOES IT TO ME IN HER OWN BOOKS, THE TRICKY WENCH.

And the winner is… Geisha, by Liza Dalby partly because it is my favourite and partly by virtue of being the only non-photography non-fiction book I have voluntarily read this decade (last decade’s was Children of the SS, and yeah, I really do read shit like that by choice).

I am going to assume that this means a “fiction” book rather than a “fictional” book, because that would just be perplexing.

Anyway, I am currently innundated with books. I’m halfway through Melissa Marr’s Ink Exchange, the second in the Tattoo Faries series BUT I also just bought Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl, and Ash by Malinda Lo in a fit of fiscal recklessness because they were on sale and I am a sale slut.

However, I am going to ignore those and pick Ally Carter’s AWESOME Heist Society for today. Because it is awesome and I really cannot be more coherent about it. Sorry.

Also, how many awesome books are coming out this year? The next Queen’s Thief, White Cat, John Green & David Levithan’s co-written book, The Demon’s Covenant, the Unicorns vs Zombies anthology, The Dead-Tossed Waves (omg, so looking forward to that one), Mockingjay, Ascendant, AND THE FIRST CLOCKWORK ANGELS BOOK.

There are going to be a lot of tough descisions over food vs books this year. Oh dear.

This is the photo I took for St David’s Day this year, indulging my Welsh half that generally only comes out when Wales play rugby (especially against england) or when there is Double Dragon to be drunk.

Curiously enough, the only three things I can say in welsh are “Hello, how are you?”, “Happy St David’s Day” and “How much for a pint of double dragon?”

I once tried to learn “GO WALES, HIT THAT AUSTRALIAN IN THE FACE. DO NOT SHAME ME LIKE ENGLAND HAS” but I was forcibly stopped, and also, it was hard.

Basically, I am useless in Wales, unless you want to get drunk, which means that I get along with my Welsh family really really well. Particularly since we are from Felinfoel, where Double Dragon is made… Coincidence?

This photo makes me so happy that I want to cry. I want the summer to come back, I want lazy days laying in the road with a beer, or lying out by the Pells, or getting drunk in the garden. Bring back the summer, bring back the sun, bring back the heat, bring back my friends.

Ok, today what makes me gleeful is that I went shopping to New Look and came out with six things for £54, and a) all of them look fantastic, b) I now own skinny jeans AND THEY LOOK GOOD, hereby proving that yes, you can wear them if you are a size 18, which I did not believe before my sister made me try them on, and c) I am almost a size 16.

That means that I have dropped a dress size in a week just through eating more fruit & veg, ditching diet coke and taking up water instead, and doing a 30 minute workout four times a week. This totally makes me gleeful, and I am going to wear my new black dress with roses on it to lunch tomorrow even though it’s totally innapropriate 😀